Emma - Jane Eyre - One of my Favourite Novels

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Emma - Jane Eyre - One of my Favourite Novels

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June 26th, 2009

02:31 pm - Jane Eyre - One of my Favourite Novels
Background - This is one of my favourite novels so this is a bit of incoherent fangirling of the book.

Character - Jane Eyre is a first person narrative and the strength of the story is the strength of Jane’s character. She is a remarkable narrator - small, plain, poor and fierce.

I love her absolute determination to do what she thinks best, regardless of her circumstances. Her passion and her perseverance. Her strong sense of conscience.

This is one of the most powerful passages in English, I think:

'Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little,
I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! — I have
as much soul as you, — and full as much heart! And if
God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth,
I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it
is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now
through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor
even of mortal flesh; — it is my spirit that addresses
your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave,
and we stood at God’s feet, equal, — as we are!'

I think she could do better than Rochester - who is frankly a bit of a prat - but she thinks he is what she wants and I want her to be happy:-)

She looks for someone to serve, so of course Rochester only becomes more desirable to her when he needs her eyes and hands.

Rochester is, IMHO, a twit. I am particularly unimpressed with his muttering ‘God pardon me! and man meddle not with me; I have her, and will hold her’. Talk about your Gothic stuff.

Also, the passage where he compares her to a much-loved ewe accidentally killed, it does not convince me that he loves her.

I think he follows his own convenience in all things. If he could have had Blanche he would have - his tastes run to big girls. He married lustfully and for money and then when it didn’t work out he wandered about Europe buying sex with women and moping. But since he cannot have Blanche, he makes do with Jane’s love for him.

Plus, of course, I am far from convinced that he handled Bertha’s madness well. Are we sure she was mad? She has ‘lucid periods’ in which she complains about his treatment of him. Oh really? What’s not to appreciate in being locked, unacknowledged, in an attic with a drunkard?

Alternately, she really is mad and he provides for her care only the drunken Grace even though he knows that Bertha is consistently eluding her and escaping to attempt to harm people. Not terribly responsible.

And, of course, did she really jump off the roof or did he push her?

St John Rivers - I actually like him. I know that most people don’t but I think he is the mirror of Rochester only with more conscience.

Images of fire and ice are contrasted all the way through the book (beginning in the nook with the red curtain looking out at the white cold world outside, the decorations at Thornfield, imagery of nature).* Rochester is obviously the fire and Rivers the implacable ice.

He is just as passionate as Rochester only he does what he thinks to be right rather than what suits him.

* Imagery - the books starts with the unforgettable juxtaposition of fire and ice. On one hand: 'Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear November day'

On the other: 'the vast sweep of the Arctic Zone, and those forlorn regions of dreary space, — that reservoir of frost and snow, where firm fields of ice, the accumulation of centuries of winters, glazed in Alpine heights above heights, surround the pole, and concentre the multiplied rigours of extreme cold.'

Themes - The overt religion is probably off-putting to some contemporary readers but I like it. Belief in following God leads Jane to refuse Rochester.

At the same time, false religion is criticised consistently. The criticism of Brocklehurst is so scathing it almost hurts. Apparently the guy he is based on tried to sue for libel. The bit where he is going on about modesty and then his overdressed daughters and wife come in? Priceless. And unmercifully savage.

Feminism - This is a profoundly feminist book for me. There is that passage when Jane is up on the top of the manor thinking about how she longs for freedom.

'Anybody may blame me who likes, when I add
further, that, now and then, when I took a walk by
myself in the grounds; when I went down to the gates
and looked through them along the road; or when,
while Adele played with her nurse, and Mrs. Fairfax
made jellies in the storeroom, I climbed the three
staircases, raised the trap-door of the attic, and having
reached the leads, looked out afar over sequestered field
and hill, and along dim sky-line — that then I longed
for a power of vision which might overpass that limit;
which might reach the busy world, towns, regions full
of life I had heard of but never seen — that then I
desired more of practical experience than I possessed;
more of intercourse with my kind, of acquaintance with
variety of character, than was here within my reach. I
valued what was good in Mrs. Fairfax, and what was
good in Adele; but I believed in the existence of other
and more vivid kinds of goodness, and what I believed
in I wished to behold.

Who blames me? Many, no doubt; and I shall be
called discontented. I could not help it: the restlessness
was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes.
Then my sole relief was to walk along the corridor of
the third storey, backwards and forwards, safe in the
silence and solitude of the spot, and allow my mind’s
eye to dwell on whatever bright visions rose before it —
and, certainly, they were many and glowing; to let my
heart be heaved by the exultant movement, which,
while it swelled it in trouble, expanded it with life; and,
best of all, to open my inward ear to a tale that was
never ended — a tale my imagination created, and
narrated continuously; quickened with all of incident,
life, fire, feeling, that I desired and had not in my actual
existence.

It is in vain to say human beings ought to be
satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and
they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are
condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions
are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how
many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in
the masses of life which people earth. Women are
supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just
as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a
field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they
suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a
stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is
narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-
creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves
to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing
on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless
to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do
more or learn more than custom has pronounced
necessary for their sex.'

As Virginia Woolf points out, there is a jarring break at this point as Bronte returns to the plot.

'When thus alone, I not unfrequently heard Grace Poole’s laugh'.

I think this break exists because Bronte got carried away with her polemic and forgot the novel.

Remember, too, that just writing the novel meant a break with what women were meant to be doing. Charlotte wrote to the poet Southey for advice on her writing and her replied ‘Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life, and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure she will have for it, even as an accomplishment and a recreation.’

That’s not exactly helpful when you are an aspiring author. Thank goodness she did not listen to him.

Charlotte Bronte - A Few Biographical Notes

Of course Charlotte’s life was as remarkable as the life of Jane Eyre.

I’ve been to Haworth and it is the oddest place. You step out of the parsonage directly into the graveyard. Literally, one steo from the doorway you are surrounded by graves. You step out of the graveyard and you are on the moor. They were literally ringed by death and beyond that eternity.

It is impossible not to think of Charlotte’s own experiences in parts of the book - especially the description of Lowood. Knowing that two of her own sisters died of illneses contracted at school make Helen Burns’ death all the more poignant.

Her description of Lowood was immediately recognised at the time of publication and Carus Wilson (Mr Brocklehurst) brought a legal action.

I don't have any real conclusions here. I feel that I have been far from doing justice to the book - lack of sleep has eaten into my time for reading and thinking this month.

All I can say is - One of my favourite books! All good!

Tags: 19th century book club, books, charlotte bronte, feminism

(Leave a comment)

Comments:

From:	amythis
Date:	June 26th, 2009 03:53 pm (UTC)

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A few things I can add:

1. I like the parallel of the two sets of two girl-cousins & one boy-cousin, the Reeds and the Riverses, bad and good. (I ship Jane/Diana, lol.)
2. I read A Wide Sargasso Sea this month, since I finishe JE early. It was, um, disappointing. I did like the suggestion that Rochester drove Bertha mad, but not much was done with it. Then I went on to reread Rebecca, because I was looking for parallels to JE, not a lot of them actually, but it is a good read.
3. I'm currently rereading The Brontes: Charlotte Bronte and Her Family by Rebecca Fraser, which I recommend. The Brontes' life-story is definitely as dramatic as any of their fiction.
4. JE is a feminist book, and character, but it's Victorian feminism, linked to women's moral superiority and self-sacrifice.
5. I was much younger when I first read this book, and I remember getting so angry at the injustice of the Lowood part, poor Helen Burns!
6. I feel sorry for Adele. Rochester wasn't much of a father, whether or not he was biologically.
7. You've got to love an author audacious enough to write "Reader, I married him." That rocks on so many levels!

(Reply) (Thread)

From:	emma_in_oz
Date:	June 27th, 2009 12:33 am (UTC)

Wide Sargasso Sea

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2. I read A Wide Sargasso Sea this month, since I finishe JE early. It was, um, disappointing. I did like the suggestion that Rochester drove Bertha mad, but not much was done with it. Then I went on to reread Rebecca, because I was looking for parallels to JE, not a lot of them actually, but it is a good read.

I read it for the first time this month too and I was disappointed. I thought there would be more... oomph to it. The meandering tone suited her eventual (or incipient) madness but I wanted more plot.

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Comments:

Wide Sargasso Sea

Re: Wide Sargasso Sea

Brontes

Re: Brontes

Schools

Re: Schools

Adele

Re: Adele

Re: Adele

Re: Adele

Re: Adele

Re: Adele

I respectfully disagree and move to roger Mr Rochester.

Re: I respectfully disagree and move to roger Mr Rochester.

Re: I respectfully disagree and move to roger Mr Rochester.

Re: I respectfully disagree and move to roger Mr Rochester.

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